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Texas’ war on California a true threat
It’s easy to see the four-day job-poaching foray into California just completed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry as an isolated incident. But it’s really just the latest skirmish in the economic war the Lone Star state has waged against California for more than a decade.
The energy crunch this state suffered through between 2000 and 2002 was the earliest episode in this conflict. One year-2000 scene in a waiting area of Houston’s Intercontinental Airport (now named for the first President George Bush) indicated the mindset behind it.
A crowd of youngish men milled around in expensive suits, mocking California as they awaited a Continental Airlines flight to Los Angeles. Many were employed by big energy trading companies like Enron and Dynegy (both now defunct in large part due to their illegal market manipulations).
Jokes rippled through the throng, themed on how their companies were ripping off California “grandmas” for what would eventually amount to more than $10 billion in excessive electricity costs.
The manipulations that so amused the yuppie Texans sent California reeling through an unprecedented crisis of rolling blackouts and escalating rates. A steady barrage of attacks on California’s reputation and economy has followed.
Actual war was never declared, but then-Gov. Gray Davis publicly spoke of calling up the California National Guard to force the restart of power plants in this state that had been purchased and then temporarily shut down by energy trading firms.
Charges abound about other Texas companies trying to gouge Californians: The Consumer Watchdog advocacy group has charged that Valero, for example, averages a 37 percent higher profit margin on every barrel of oil it produces in California than at its refineries elsewhere. Is that one reason gas costs more here than anywhere else in the Lower 48 states?
Perry’s latest sortie in this warfare began with radio commercials in which he took some shots at California’s business climate.
This won him enormous publicity here and back home, as he continues trying to recover from his goof-up presidential campaign of last year, when he quickly went from early favorite to early dropout in the race for the Republican nomination.
Perry spent most of his time here trying to convince some businesses to move to Texas and away from this state, America’s largest market for most products.
California Gov. Jerry Brown laughed off Perry’s effort, calling it “not a serious story . . . it’s not a burp, it’s barely a fart.” He mockingly invited Perry to try harder. “Everyone with half a brain is coming to California, home of Apple, Google, Hollywood studios,” he said, adding an invitation for Texans to “come on over.”
But the Perry effort and the economic warfare of which it is part are not laughing matters. California consumers got back pennies on the dollars extorted by corrupt energy traders during the electricity crunch. Some California companies have relocated to or placed new plants in Texas, to the extent that Democratic Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom went there shortly after taking office in 2011 to see what Texas was doing.
The bottom line turned out to be this: Texas and its cities offer companies big incentives to locate there, from subsidized land to years of tax exemptions. The state has lower taxes on corporations and individuals than California partly because of its oil and gas depletion levies, which replace revenue that otherwise would have to come from income tax. Meanwhile, Texas- and-Oklahoma-based oil operators like billionaire T. Boone Pickens fight fiercely against it every time California considers imposing a similar levy.
California is now the only major oil producing state without such a tax.
As in any war, there can be turncoats. A prominent one this time is Chuck DeVore, a former Republican California assemblyman who migrated to the Lone Star state and became vice president of policy for the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.
DeVore now tries to spin negatives about Texas into positives – one example being the fact that his new state ranks last in percentage of adults with high school diplomas. He points out that California is third from last, but notes that the numbers in both states are pulled down by their vast populace of “the foreign born.”
Then there are Texas state legislators who at Perry’s bidding authorized a study to find ways of enticing California businesses to their state, targeting California and no other state. Why only California, and not Oregon or New York or North Carolina?
Real wars have begun between nations over far less than Texas has inflicted on California, so this is more than a mere joke. It’s time for Brown and the California Legislature to stop laughing and recognize Texas as an economic enemy whose denizens have schemed for more than a decade to harm this state and all its citizens.
Thomas Elias is a California author. Reach him at tdelias@aol.com.
Discussion | 9 comments
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gmlgrahamMarch 09, 2013 - 8:22 am
Happy to back, living & working in California!! I lived in Austin, Texas 1 1/2 years too long; couldn't stand the weather, no income tax, BUT the taxes on your home, etc, etc, etc
Reply |JagMarch 09, 2013 - 9:45 am
Happy to see an open and fair market, business needs to go where they can get the best deal for them, Yes California has Google and yahoo and soon they will have all the high tech jobs and everything else will be gone, the first step they need is right to work you can join if you want but you are not force to be union, Solano county has spent the last thirty years building house after house but has never got a big name company. Very poor planning
Reply |Boo BooMarch 09, 2013 - 3:18 pm
Good point on Solano County, especially Fairfield. The city planners pushing more and more sub-divisions has just driven home prices down. We all know what that has led too. California's (liberal SF) should take a lesson from Texas to bring mfg jobs to our state. Relax on the BS regulations a bit. This pol correctness has gone a bit to far.. My opinion.
Reply |testMarch 17, 2013 - 1:26 pm
appreciate the effort you put into getting us this details. Was looking on google and located your post randomly.
Reply |StRMarch 17, 2013 - 1:38 pm
November 3, 2011....Twilight of the Puppets: Rick Perry's Crazy Speech & The Mental Collapse of U.S. Politicians....Saman Mohammadi ....The Excavator....Google this and watch the Perry Speech....Question is who is s Perry's Illuminati Programmer and who is his Handler on the day to day basis?
Reply |ContinuedMarch 17, 2013 - 1:42 pm
Perry has been groomed by George W. Bush’s puppet master Karl Rove for several years and has learned to presents a fake image of himself as a down-home populist according to Watson...... He barks Tea Party-style rhetoric about Texas secession, shooting animals and cuddling up to right-wing Christian evangelicals, but he has been selling out Texas to globalist interests by auctioning off highways to foreign companies to turn them into profit-driven toll roads........ “Speculation that Perry is the Bilderberg group’s ace card was prompted by the current political climate, which can largely be gleaned from the fact that Perry is a longtime, unwavering supporter of the NAFTA Superhighway and related infrastructure projects,” wrote AFP’s Jim Tucker in early June. “These pave the way for the Bilderberg-supported North American Union (NAU) proposal that would merge the U.S., Canada and Mexico.”.........
Reply |ContinuedMarch 17, 2013 - 1:47 pm
Also, Perry has supported former Mexican President Vicente Fox’s efforts to turn Texas into a sanctuary state for illegal Mexican immigrants.......... Another Bilderberg Group backed agenda point he is promoting in his state is the Rockefeller Foundation-backed HPV vaccination campaign that has led to worldwide deaths and paralyzations. David Rockefeller is a prominent Bilderberger, attending each annual meeting including this year’s event........ Perry attended the June 2007 Bilderberg conference in Istanbul, Turkey according to photographs and eyewitnesses for Alex Jones and other international news outlets trying to spy on the event.......... By Perry attending the secret summit, he violated the Logan Act – a United States federal law that forbids unauthorized citizens from negotiating with foreign governments......... Bilderberg has proven its kingmaker role time and time again not just in U.S. politics but worldwide.......... Bill Clinton was a mostly unknown Governor of Arkansas before he attended a Bilderberg meeting in 1991 and went on to become President a year later.......... Also, British Prime Minister Tony Blair attended Bilderberg before his election in 1997........... According to Euro Weekly News, Maria Dolores De Cospedal’s attendance at Bilderberg 2011 in St. Moritz Switzerland also “augurs a victory in Spain’s next general election” for her Partido Popular party........... Obama was reportedly aided by the Bilderberg Group when he infamously disappeared to a secret location with Hillary Clinton and Diana Feinstein in June 2008 in Chantilly, Virginia, while the the Bilderbergers were meeting at the same hotel.......... Bilderberg member James A. Johnson was also responsible for selecting Obama’s running mate Joe Biden. He previously selected John Edwards as John Kerry’s right hand man in 2004 after Edwards had impressed Bilderberg elitists Henry Kissinger and David Rockefeller with a speech he gave at their meeting in Italy that year...........
Reply |ReferenceMarch 17, 2013 - 1:48 pm
Rick Perry’s GOP 2012 Presidential Run Backed by New World Order Bilderberg Group August 16th, 2011...By Truthquake.com Staff
Reply |But this is goodMarch 17, 2013 - 2:02 pm
Eric W. Dolan Raw Story Wed, 06 Mar 2013.....Gov. Rick Perry backs 20-week abortion ban in Texas.......Postering for the Conservative Peeps, but OK if the end result is not human sacrifice....Mainly due to good people in the Texas Legislature and not the Gov.
Reply |